STUDIES IN 

KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 


HELEN THOBURN 






















Studies in 

Knowing Jesus Christ 

FOR YOUNGER GIRLS 


By 

HELEN THOBURN 

ft 


New York 
The Womans Press 
1919 




Copyright, 1919, by 

National Board, Young Womens Christian Associations 
of the United States of America 


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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction. 

Good News. 

. 7 

Chapter 

I. 

What Seek Ye? 

. 15 

Chapter 

II. 

The Things Ye Have Seen . 

. 25 

Chapter 

III. 

The Things Ye Have Heard 

. 35 

Chapter 

IV. 

Who Say Ye that I Am? . 

. 45 

Chapter 

V. 

I Send You Forth . 

. 55 

Chapter 

VI. 

Would Ye also Go Away? . 

. 65 

Chapter 

VII. 

I Am with You Always . 

. 73 

A Teaching Outline. 

. 81 













































































































































































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INTRODUCTION 
GOOD NEWS 

1. Wishes 

2. Some Old Records about a Friend 

3. Telling the Records Apart 

4. The Latest News 










































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INTRODUCTION 
GOOD NEWS 

1. Wishes 

Ever since the days when we first learned to 
chant “Star-light, star-bright, first star I see to¬ 
night,” most of us have known what it is to be 
wishing always for something just a little out of 
our reach. 

Probably for all of us it began with wanting to 
be “good, rich and beautiful”; probably for all 
of us those three well-worn wishes finally merged 
into one eternal wish, to find the perfect friend. 
Now we thought it was going to be this person, now 
that, but still the star burned on and still we wished 
for something better. In the end does the wish 
die out, or is there any answer? “Come and see.” 

2. Some Old Records about a Friend 

Once upon a time a little group of just such 
wishful people found just such a friend. With no 
thought of the rest of us, simply to share Him 
with people they knew, they wrote letters or records 
about i Him to other friends of theirs. A few of 
these were kept, just as you and I sometimes keep 
the letters we care most about. At first they were 
written to people who had already known more or 
less about the man Jesus, so it was not necessary 


8 


STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 


to recall the facts of his life; these letters are what 
we know as the Epistles, many of which were writ¬ 
ten before the longer records. But after a while, 
as people began to forget, a few of those who had 
known the most about Jesus wrote out the story 
of his life and teachings as they recalled them, and 
these four stories came to be called the Good News. 

Now everyone knows that good news can never 
be kept a secret. In this case it spread and spread, 
and the records were copied and recopied, until 
today practically every one of us owns a copy of 
them. We have got so used to seeing them around 
that we have almost forgotten that they started in 
the minds and hearts of very real, very human 
people. But if we go into the matter of how the 
four gospels started, we shall find that even though 
two of them included whole sections borrowed from 
the one written first, they are as humanly different 
as were the four men who wrote them. 

3. Telling the Records Apart 

Some of the most necessary things to know about 
the differences in the four stories of Jesus Christ 
are as follows: 

The first three are called the Synoptics, from 
Greek words meaning “to view together,’’ because 
they use the same material. The Gospel of Mark, 
although until lately it was thought to be the last 
and least important, was written first, and Matthew 
and Luke, writing for quite different purposes, 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


frankly borrowed very largely from Mark’s record. 
In addition they both seem to have drawn on some 
other source which probably was a collection of 
the sayings of Jesus. Scholars speak of this lost 
manuscript as “Q” (from the German word 
‘ ‘ Quelle, ’’ meaning sources), and it is as mysterious 
as the ‘ 1 X ’’ in our algebra problems, but more may 
be known about it some day. Luke also had some 
source to draw on which was unknown to the rest 
(see especially Luke 10: 25—17). Some people think 
his additional material may have come from his 
acquaintance with Mary, the mother of Jesus, who 
in Acts 1:14 is spoken of as belonging to the early 
church with which Luke came into contact. The 
Gospel of John was written long after the rest, and 
its purpose was so much more to portray the spirit 
of Jesus than the circumstances of his life, that the 
order of events is found, by comparison with the 
other records, to be sometimes mixed and fore¬ 
shortened. 

Mark is thought to have been Peter’s secretary, 
who wrote down Peter’s recollections of Jesus for 
the people of Rome, among whom Peter was preach¬ 
ing. This “Gospel of Peter” was written between 
65 and 70 A. D. and its simple and vigorous form 
shows Jesus in action better than do any of the 
others. 

Matthew’s record was written about 75 A. D. and, 
because he was writing as a Jew to his own people, 
his chief purpose is to identify Jesus with the leader 


10 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

whom they had been expecting for generations, so 
he constantly refers to the Old Testament. 

Luke, the Greek physician who traveled with 
Paul, wrote his record about 80 A. D. and seemed 
to have in mind a wider circle of people than just 
the Hebrews; for he thinks of Jesus as the “friend 
of all the world/ ’ 

The author of John, writing perhaps as late as 
100 A. D. after the church had started and while it 
was meeting attack and misunderstanding on all 
sides, wTote to Christians everywhere about the 
central fact of their religion which they needed 
to cherish most—the personality of Jesus Christ. 

Most of this group had been very young when 
this beloved Friend came into their lives. Long 
afterwards they wrote as they remembered, yet 
even then they attempted to use his actual words. 
Why do you think they would remember so well? 

The understanding of these records changes and 
grows almost from day to day, as the wisest, most 
reverent minds work on them; but we don't have 
to wait to be extremely scholarly to enter this won¬ 
derland of study. Here is a realm of knowledge 
that is still in the making: it will take us the rest 
of our lives to keep up with it! 

4. The Latest News 

Of course the letters written by friends who had 
seen and heard Jesus count most, but He was a 
man whose personality was like the sun : everything 


INTKODUCTION 


11 


He touched reflected Him. When the last person 
who had known Him on earth died, did people 
gradually stop talking about Him? No, each year 
added more and more to the good news. For in¬ 
stead of a memory, He was a living Presence, and 
is more than ever so today. Each generation has 
had something new to add, and lately we are be¬ 
ginning to realize that we shall never fully know 
Him until every kind of people under the sun has 
had a chance to reflect Him in its own original way. 
Have you ever thought about what it would mean if 
the oriental countries were truly made Christian, 
how much light they would be able to throw on 
the personality of this man who was, after all, an 
Oriental? “If Christ is universal it will take a 
universe to interpret Him. We, with all our cen¬ 
turies of Christian thought, have as yet understood 
but a fragment of his mind. ’’ 

As for our own part in the good news, you know 
it is sometimes said that there are five gospels, the 
four found in the New Testament, and the 1 1 gospel 
according to you.” What sort of a Jesus Christ 
do you reflect to those who may never read much 
about Him in any other way than by seeing your 
life? 




CHAPTER I 


WHAT SEEK YE? 

John 1: 35-39 

1. The Girl who was Challenged 

2. “As the People Were in Expectation” 

3. Some Questions for Us Today 

4. Rethinking Jesus Christ 















CHAPTER I 


WHAT SEEK YE? 

Where the sun shines in the street 
There are very many feet 
Seeking God, all unaware 
That their seeking is a prayer. 

Perhaps these feet would deem it odd 
Who think they are on business bent, 

If someone went 
And told them, 

“You are seeking God.” 

—Mary Carolyn Davies. 

1. The Girl who was Challenged 

During the war a certain story was told in differ¬ 
ent towns, almost as a legend, until one realized 
that it must have happened to more than one girl. 
It was about like this: 

A group of schoolgirls had gathered at a rail¬ 
road station to say good-bye to some of their aviator 
friends who w T ere en route to a port of embarkation. 
The men had only a few minutes between trains, 
hut because the group was under high tension they 
all talked nonsense, as is the American way. Sud¬ 
denly, however, one of the men turned to a girl 
whom he had known for years, and said abruptly: 
'“We’ve never talked below the surface, have we, 
hut I’ve always felt as if you knew about the sort 


16 


STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 


of thing that matters most. I don’t suppose, to be 
blunt, that I’ll come back. I wish you’d tell me 
what you think about God, and what you think 
life’s for, anyway! ’ ’ 

There is no record of what that girl said in the 
few breathless moments that were left. The essen¬ 
tial point is that under the stress of war conditions, 
people all over the country, from high school stu¬ 
dents to grown men and women of conventional 
ways, time and again broke through that unwritten 
law that had tended to make it “not quite good 
form” to face up to life as it really is. 

Today, and for years to come, we shall need, even 
more than in war-time, to understand as much as 
we can of ‘ ‘ what life is for, anyway. ’ ’ The person 
who is an expert on living will be the person who 
will count for the most in the building of the new 
world. And to whom shall we go but to that one 
who was the Way (John 6:68)? Shall we stop 
thinking just because we are no longer at war; or 
shall we be eager and original and vivid enough 
to specialize on ‘ ‘ the things that matter most ’ ’ ? 

2. “As the People Were in Expectation” 

“They sat upon the Bridge between the desert 
and the sea, and trafficked with the nations going 
past. Yet they were not only a race of traffickers; 
they dreamed greatly, and their dreaming was all 
of God.” So does a present-day writer describe 
the people who ‘ ‘ were in expectation ’ ’ for one Sent- 


WHAT SEEK YE? 


17 


of-God, for a Messiah, who should come almost any 
day to answer all their hopes. 

Another says of them, still more picturesquely, 

* 1 From the time of David, the Hebrew nation might 
he painted as a man with his hand over his eyes, 
looking forward.’’ Read, for example, Jeremiah 
33 :14-16, and Isaiah 9 : 2-7 and chapters 11 and 12, 
and think your way a little into this waiting quality 
of a whole nation. Many of them hoped only for 
a political leader, a few of the most prophetic souls 
saw that only a man filled with the very spirit of 
God could answer Israel’s deepest need; and in 
Isaiah particularly do we find the longing for a 
leader who should teach the nation to be ‘ ‘ a serving 
state. ’ ’ 

3. Some Questions for Us Today 

While the hope of the Hebrew people for a Mes¬ 
siah was a matter of history, there is something 
away down deep in each one of us that corresponds 
to it. The chief difference is that their longing was 
definitely answered, as little as they may have 
realized it, by the coming of Christ, and ours we 
know to be dependent on our own efforts; either it 
dies out for lack of being satisfied, or some day we 
pull ourselves up short and face such questions as 
these: 

Whose was the strongest personality that ever 
came into the world ? How could you prove that ? 
If this was really the most outstanding person of 


18 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

all time, could one be called intelligent or educated 
without knowing about Him? 

How much do you know about Jesus Christ? 

Which is your strongest point, your heart or your 
mind—your ‘‘ heart-line ’ ’ or your “ head-line, * ’ as 
a gypsy would say? If it is your mind, have you 
treated it fairly unless you have really tried it on 
the most absorbing problem in existence, the fact 
of Jesus Christ ? Can you think of any good reason 
why you should put off knowing about Him, then, 
a day longer? 

Perhaps you think you already know Him. A 
little oriental girl, used to the frankness of a mis¬ 
sion station in Korea, startled and embarrassed an 
American beside whom she was sitting in a train 
by asking, ‘ ‘ Are you a Christian ? ’ 9 * If she had 
asked you, what would have been your answer? 
Does Christianity mean to you a conventional be¬ 
lief or does it mean a relationship which influences 
your way of living? 

How much of your Christianity is second-hand 
and how much is built up out of your own thinking 
and experience ? How much of it could you explain 
to someone who didn’t understand? If it is not 
worth sharing how much is it worth to you ? 

What have you got for yourself from the Bible ? 
What do you go to the Bible for, anyway ? Do you 
ever wish you had never read any of it so you could 
come to it with a fresh mind? 

*“The Girl’s Year Book,” p. 110. 


WHAT SEEK YE? 


19 


Could it be that you are so used to knowing about 
Jesus Christ that you take it for granted that you 
know Him? What is the difference? Have you 
ever suddenly “discovered’’ someone whom you 
had just been taking for granted? The fact that 
we are so often unaware of the life of God in the 
world is in a sense what the author means in the 
mystical prologue to the Gospel of John, “He was 
in the world and the world knew him not.” 

With questions such as these fresh in your mind, 
suppose you stop right here and read, first the pro¬ 
logue, in John 1:1-18, and then the whole Gospel 
of Mark. Try reading it as if you had never heard 
of it before. 

4. Rethinking Jesus Christ 

Do you remember how, in “Little Women,” 
when they were acting out “Pilgrim's Progress,” 
Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy used to drop their 
bundles on the stairs? No one can ever approach 
anew the story of Jesus Christ as told in the Bible, 
without having some “bundles” to get rid of. I 
expect to go on giving up small ideas for larger ones 
about God all of my life: don’t you? Think of 
what will be known about Him fifty years from 
now, or even twenty-five, that will improve on the 
best we can possibly know now! 

In the bundles there will be some left-over ideas 
we had when we were children and could under¬ 
stand things only in very literal terms; there will 


20 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

probably be some hymns that seem to us to have 
very limited and even queer ideas about God and 
heaven and the world as we see it; there will be 
some pictures of Jesus that have never quite satis¬ 
fied us because they lacked the young audacious 
power and vitality and overflowing joyousness that 
we felt sure would have shown there. 

Yet on the other hand, think of the heritage most 
of us have to start out with, none of which we would 
give up: the almost instinctive belief we have had 
from the beginning, because we grew up in what 
is at least called a Christian country, that there is 
a God and that, however little we know about it, 
there is “something in Jesus Christ that all the 
world wants”; the glorious old hymns and the 
understanding new ones that we really like; the 
love of God that we have seen reflected in the faces 
and lives of people we know. 

The thing is to take the best from the past, in all 
reverence for the way in which people have step 
by step sought after God according to the best they 
knew at the time; to realize always that the greatest 
truth still lies ahead and that you have to be just 
as ready for it when you are fifty as you are now; 
but above all to lose no time in setting forth on 
the great search, this very day. 

“ I do not imagine that I have yet laid hold of it. 
But this one thing I do, forgetting everything which 
is past and stretching forward to what lies in front 
of me, with my eyes fixed on the goal I push on to 


WHAT SEEK YE? 


21 


the prize of God’s heavenward call in Christ 
Jesus.” From Paul’s letter to the Philippians 
(Weymouth translation). 







CHAPTER II 


THE THINGS YE HAVE SEEN 
Matthew 11:2-5 

1. As He Passed 

2. *‘ The Works that I Do” 

3. Modern Miracles 

4. “He Lives Here” 


















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CHAPTER II 


THE THINGS YE HAVE SEEN 

Erect in youthful grace, and radiant 
With spirit forces, all imparadised 
In a divine compassion, down the slant 
Of these remembering hills He came, the Christ. 

—Katharine Lee Bates. 


1. As He Passed 

Had you been one of the 1 ‘ unrecorded ones ’ ’ who 
saw Jesus in a crowd, or passed Him often on the 
Galilean shore, or had cause never to forget Him 
because of some touch of his upon your life, what 
in Him do you think would have attracted you 
first? 

Read over again Mark 1:14—7, to have those 
earliest impressions of Jesus freshly in mind. 
Long before your reasoning power was set to work¬ 
ing by the strange things He said, your interest 
would have been caught by just the things you 
could see. First, what of his appearance ? Discard 
all the accepted ideas about this if you can, and 
try to imagine how He would have looked to you. 
Because of the conventional pictures of Him, it is 
hard for us to remember how young He really was 
and seemed. For though from the first He “ spake 
with authority, ’ * all the charm and wistfulness of 


26 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

youth clung to Him up to the very day of his death. 
It was a quality which accounted very much for the 
sheer adoration which people felt for Him. It was 
not only the youthfulness of his brief life, but the 
eternal youth which radiates from One who was 
conscious every moment of his immortality. Have 
you ever seen that quality in any friends of his 
whom you know? 

But the first impression would probably have 
been more than just that of his appearance. Was 
it ever possible to see Him when his whole person¬ 
ality was not going out to that of someone else, in 
swift response to some individual who needed Him ? 
Again we say, as did those first friends of his, 
“Come and see.” 

2. “The Works that I Do” 

Have you ever known anyone whose way of living 
was utterly unlike that of anyone else? We so 
seldom see such a person that we can scarcely real¬ 
ize how startlingly original Jesus seemed to those 
who watched Him day by day, in his every action, 
his whole plan of life. 

Think of any one of his days. For example, the 
record of a whole day and night can apparently 
be constructed out of a part of the first chapter of 
Mark. How much time, perhaps, might have gone 
to study? (Was study to Him a matter only of 
books?) How much to recreation? (Answer this 
carefully. What was recreation to Him?) How 


THE THINGS YE HAVE SEEN 


27 


much to organizations, committee meetings, making 
plans? How much to individuals as compared to 
crowds ? What things had a place in his days that 
have no place in ours ? 

Subtract from an average day in your own life 
every least word or act, on the part of yourself or 
anyone else, that has in it anything of the spirit 
of Jesus Christ. What is left? Isn’t it a dull 
and rather heartless twenty-four hours? Then 
imagine yourself, again, to be back in Palestine in 
the year 27 A. D.* Suppose you were just learning 
how to be a grown-up person, and kept “getting 
in wrong,” as we say, and tangling up your rela¬ 
tionships with other people. Who cared!—or who 
would have had the patience to talk it over with 
you? Suppose you were always being misunder¬ 
stood, and down underneath were desperately self- 
conscious and lonely, who was there to be friendly 
and pull you out of it? Suppose you were sick, 
who was there to heal, and in any case what sort 
of healing would it be ? 

If we realize, ever so dimly, how unusual Jesus’ 
way of life seemed to the people of his time, we 
wonder less that they were inclined to describe 
many of his deeds as miracles. 

A really great life is seldom understood until 
long afterward, chiefly because it is so different. 
Even today we are sometimes much more concerned 

*Our calendar is supposedly three years ahead of time 
in relation to the actual date of Jesus’ birth. 


28 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

by the miraculous element which seemed to enter 
into many of the deeds of Jesus than we are by 
the challenge to us in those of his actions which we 
can understand. 

Can we draw the line between Jesus’ plain acts 
of healing and the so-called miracles ? Do you think 
He over-ruled any of God’s laws or simply under¬ 
stood how to use them better than we do ? Harry 
Emerson Fosdick tells a story of an old farmer who 
was tremendously interested in the first railroad 
he had ever seen, when it was built across his land. 
He used to sit on the fence and watch the trains 
go by, and he found to his amazement, and then 
somewhat to his conceit, that they always came at 
the same time, so that by studying them with his 
watch in his hand he was finally able to make a 
fixed schedule. Then one day a “special” came 
by from headquarters. Picture the old farmer’s 
chagrin! ‘ ‘ Perhaps, ’ ’ Dr. Fosdick goes on to say, 
“ it is the law of the universe to send a special every 
once in a while, from headquarters. God never 
had to break one of his own laws, but we don’t 
know about all the laws yet.” Apply that to the 
life of Jesus, who was so close to the thought of 
God that He was in perfect harmony with God’s 
mind, and see how it helps to clear up the difficul¬ 
ties about what we call the ‘ ‘ miracles ’ ’ He wrought. 

But when you think of the deeds of Jesus, don’t 
think only of the little daughter of Jairus, or the 
feeding of the five thousand, and stop there. Give 


THE THINGS YE HAVE SEEN 


29 


your imagination full rein and think of the less 
spectacular acts of which each day must have been 
so full: a single startling sentence sent straight to 
the dull mind of some comfortable, indifferent per¬ 
son who needed to be waked up and made to amount 
to something; that never-to-be-forgotten, believing 
look into the eyes of some ‘‘down-and-out”; the 
friendly, life-giving touch on the shoulder of a dis¬ 
couraged fisherman. 

3. Modern Miracles 

A Christian is sometimes described as a person 
who lives on the plane of the impossible. No one 
had ever tried that before the time of Jesus, but He 
started it, in one little group, and it has been going 
on ever since-! And best miracle of all miracles, 
any one of us can do it. It begins with the simplest 
things. Perhaps it means nothing more than a 
genuine “Hello,” this very day, to someone whom 
it’s been easier to ignore. Perhaps it means simply 
choosing which one of two ways to spend a quarter. 
Perhaps it means caring enough, this very day, 
about “Thy Kingdom come on earth,” to think 
with God about it even though you “can’t see what 
good praying does.” 

It is hard to say which is greater, Jesus’ quick 
use of power when someone needed Him—a power 
which, because it was God’s own power, laid hold 
of laws we as yet hut dimly understand—or the 
release of his spirit among people just like our- 


30 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

selves, more and more of whom are taking his place 
in the world each year, doing the deeds of his 
human hands, loving with the love of his heart, even 
performing his miracles. 

4. “He Lives Here” 

We have to be pretty wise before we can begin 
teaching as Christ taught, but there is not one of 
us who can’t at least begin acting as He acted. 
Perhaps the simplest way to start is just in our 
attitude about this or that person. Simplest yet 
hardest, for greater than his cure of people’s bodies 
was his belief in them, which always cured their 
spirits. “She just plain believes me into being 
more than I am!” said a girl of a good friend of 
hers. So with Christ—that is what He did to every 
life He touched, and we don’t need a teacher’s cer¬ 
tificate or a medical diploma to begin right there. 
The other ways of expressing Him will come in 
time. 

On the outer edge of a crowd listening to a mis¬ 
sionary speaker in one of the cities of India stood 
a man who had strayed into the city from a village 
in the Indian jungle. He heard part of the simple 
description of the way Jesus Christ lived and died. 
Then he went back to his village, wishing he knew 
more. There were no books, there were no people 
to tell him more about this Jesus, but he decided 
he would live as the man in the story lived. Years 
later a group of missionaries penetrated to the tiny 


THE THINGS YE HAVE SEEN 


31 


village in the depths of the forest. As one of them 
told the story of Jesus Christ, the native people 
who had gathered to listen began nodding and whis¬ 
pering to one another. A spokesman for them 
finally interrupted with, “This Jesus—He lives 
here.” Curious to see what was meant, the mis¬ 
sionaries asked to be shown the person referred to. 
They were taken to the house of the man who years 
before had heard a fragment of the story of how 
Jesus lived, and who ever since had simply tried 
to live in that way. 



CHAPTER III 


THE THINGS YE HAVE HEARD 
Matthew 11:2-5 

1. A Growing Mind 

2. “The Mind of Christ” in 27 A. D. 

3. “The Mind of Christ” Today 

4. “ What Think Ye of Christ ? ’ 7 










CHAPTER III 


THE THINGS YE HAVE HEARD 

A little child, a Joy-of-Heart, with eyes 
Unsearchable, he grew in Nazareth, 

His daily speech so innocently wise 

That all the town went telling: 11 Jesus saith. M 

—Katharine Lee Bates . 


1. A Growing Mind 

At the head of our chapter stands a quatrain 
which takes us back for a moment to the childhood 
of Jesus. We know that He advanced in wisdom 
during “the silent years,” but how much have we 
used our imaginations in wondering how his mind 
was growing during that time ? It makes Him more 
“like as we are” to understand that He was prob¬ 
ably not especially conscious of his difference from 
other people for a long while, that his consciousness 
of God at first grew as naturally as does our own, 
though in a far deeper, and finally in a unique 
sense. But from the start He must have had an 
unerring instinct for truth, and as we study our 
way into the teachings of Jesus we become more 
and more impressed by ‘ ‘ that mark of moral origi¬ 
nality about his words which stamps them as gen¬ 
uine, ’ ’ that same quality which we found in study¬ 
ing his deeds. Read in connection with this chapter 


36 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

the Sermon on the Mount, in the fifth to the eighth 
chapters of Matthew; and the group of teaching- 
stories, most of them beginning, “ And he spake unto 
them this parable, ” which are scattered through 
the twelfth to the twentieth chapters of Luke. 

2. “The Mind of Christ” in 27 A. D. 

Suppose you had been one of the crowd of people 
sitting on a Galilean hillside some late afternoon, 
listening to this man who was the center of all 
interest to the northern country-folk that year. 
Suppose you had never really thought very much 
before. Why should you! There was no school, 
you saw no books or papers, your only mental train¬ 
ing had been to turn, for all knowledge and wisdom, 
to the older people of your town, especially the 
priests. When that knowledge was given it was 
likely to be as tiresome and complicated as, for 
instance, that your small brother’s fever could be 
cured if you would tie an iron knife to a thorn- 
bush by a braid of hair, repeat a certain verse from 
Exodus for three successive days, and then cut 
* down the bush! 

Then came the young teacher. There He sits on 
a rock on the hillside, in his blue and white gar¬ 
ment, an out-of-door person, a friendly person, with 
a great charm which draws at your heart as you 
look over the heads of your neighbors. Just an¬ 
other rabbi, but how strangely He talks! Instead 
of hairsplitting argument, He is telling the people 


THE THINGS YE HAVE HEARD 


37 


stories—stories about homely familiar things that 
you love to hear talked about, with plenty of color 
and symbolism, but something about each of them 
that appeals to your sense of reason, too. Strange 
new ideas are these which He seems to be telling 
you, ideas from topsy-turvy land, as that your in¬ 
conspicuous life matters as much as that of one 
of the priests or rulers; that the things that you can 
see and touch count less than certain invisible treas¬ 
ures of the spirit; that the way you have always 
secretly looked down on that neighbor sitting yon¬ 
der may be as wrong as if you had actually hurt 
him; that the pair of doves you took to the temple 
last week did not necessarily change God’s feelings 
about you. You never heard anyone talk like this 
before, but there is something very humanly con¬ 
vincing about this man. The questions about life 
which you have always kept in the back of your 
mind before this, stir a good deal more strongly, 
some of the hard-and-fast rules of the rabbis go 
scattering off as dead leaves before a fresh young 
wind. You walk slowly homeward along the shore 
of the lake, wondering perhaps about the difference 
between letting other people do your thinking for 
you, and this queer new process of doing it for 
yourself. 

3. “The Mind of Christ” Today 

You remember we said in the Introduction that 
it would take not only all kinds of people but many 


38 


STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 


generations to give the world any adequate under¬ 
standing of the personality of Christ. The question 
of “the mind of Christ/’ which was so fascinating 
to Paul (I Cor. 2:16; Phil. 2: 5), is also especially 
fascinating to our own generation. In the last few 
years very much light has been thrown on the inner 
meaning of the sayings of Jesus. Men who have 
given their whole lives to what we would think of 
as just “ dry old history, ’ ’ or the study of long-dead 
languages and forgotten customs, have in reality 
drawn us much nearer to God. 

For instance, possibly some of the Old Testament 
incidents, especially in the first books, used to 
trouble us because their understanding of God 
seemed so different from our own. But now that 
we have learned how to look at the Bible historically 
we realize that the writers of these old books were 
interpreting God according to the highest standard 
they knew then, but that all interpretations of Him, 
theirs or our own, must be held up for correction 
to that which Christ Himself taught. For example, 
the story He told of the Prodigal Son serves as an 
interpretation of a God of love that has never been 
surpassed. 

Or again, think of one of Jesus’ “hard sayings,” 
which sometimes may seem to conflict with our 
other ideas of Him. You remember how He spoke 
to that unnamed person who excused himself from 
following Him by saying, “Suffer me first to go 
and bury my father.” (Matthew 8:21.) “Leave 


THE THINGS YE HAVE HEARD 


39 


the dead to bury their dead, ’ ’ was his answer. But 
those who have studied oriental customs and forms 
of expression, tell us that the phrase “to bury my 
father” was a Hebrew way of saying “to live with 
my father until the time of his death,” and there¬ 
fore was used as a half-hearted excuse. Instantly 
this tiny shadow on your thought of “the crystal 
Christ” is cleared away, and it is easy to see how 
that reader of men’s inmost thoughts would retort, 
“Let the dead in spirit—the unresponsive—bury 
their dead 1” 

But as important as all this historical study is, 
something very much more vital is growing up 
within our own lifetime, and that is, a whole new 
understanding of the great human meanings which 
are what give eternal life and vividness to every 
saying of Jesus. When a nation goes through a 
crisis, there are sure to arise a few great prophets. 
The world is undergoing violent changes in our 
own generation. Out of the confusion have arisen 
voices here and there, saying: “We must go back 
to the teachings of Jesus Christ. They have never 
really been explored. He had things to say about 
the supreme value of human life which must have 
been meant for us, in this age when machines and 
war have made us forget the importance of human 
beings. We have remembered that He healed and 
gave. We have built hospitals and missions and 
shelters of all kinds. But we have never sufficiently 
realized that He cared even more about his teaching 


40 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

than his healing, and the great thing He meant us 
to see was that we must stop wrong and sickness 
and hurt before it begins, that to take Him at his 
word would mean an utter change in our whole 
sense of values and way of life. ’ ’ For the world is 
beginning to see that the mind of Christ must be 
applied to just such definite things as housework, 
politics, shopping, and even international treaties. 
That is what makes this the most thrilling age in 
which to be alive, in all history. 

4. ' * What Think Ye of Christ f ’ ’ 

“I don’t see how a girl with a mind like yours 
can resist it! ” 

This thrust at a girl’s intellectual pride, by a 
friend who wanted to stir her into doing some 
serious thinking about Jesus Christ, startled her 
into a curiosity which grew into absorbing interest. 
If you had been that girl, what effect would it have 
had on you? Which is worse, to starve your body 
or to starve your mind? If you have ever been 
indifferent or nominally interested in Jesus Christ, 
was it because you were really stupid, or just men¬ 
tally lazy, or “too full of very thou”? 

“How very hard it is to be a Christian!” Yes, 
it is hard not only on our wills and our hearts but 
on our minds! There is such a thing as trying too 
hard to find God through our hearts, when really 
“we’ve got it upside down, all the while He’s try¬ 
ing to find us”; but we can scarcely try too hard 


THE THINGS YE HAVE HEAKD 


41 


to find Him through our minds, in good hard study. 
It may seem an unending task. It is: that’s the fun 
of it! Fortunately, people have found it perfectly 
possible to use the Bible as a text-book of life 
whether they were good students or not, but if you 
have any mind at all, this question of the study 
of God, as He is interpreted in books and in life, 
is probably the biggest mental challenge you will 
ever meet. It is the one subject in all the world 
which is never exhausted, never caught up with, 
which has appealed to all kinds of people, which 
will always be vitally important, and which will 
always speak to you in terms of your own experi¬ 
ence. 

Did you ever have a friend whose mind and point 
of view were so stimulating that you almost had 
mental growing-pains in the effort to keep up with 
him or her? That is bound to happen when you 
open your mind to friendship with Jesus Christ. 
There are a good many familiar growing-pains in 
the realm of the application of Christ’s teachings. 
The best formula for them that I know of is in his 
own words: ‘‘The words that I have spoken unto 
you are spirit” (John 6:63), or again, Ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free 
(John 8:32). If your present understanding of 
questions of religion seems to cramp you and keep 
you from feeling free, it is pretty likely to be only 
part of the truth, and you can be sure there is a 
bigger meaning for you just along the road. 


42 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

Meanwhile, the times challenge you to this great¬ 
est of adventures—the rethinking, the redis¬ 
covery, of God. Never has a world so needed this 
as the world in which you are growing up, for 

If we build anew, 

And build to stay, 

We must find God again 
And go his way. 


CHAPTER IY 


WHO SAY YE THAT I AM? 
Matthew 16:13-16 

1. The Secret of Life 

2. The Question to Peter 

3. The Mystery of Jesus Christ 

4. The Master of the House 






























































































































































































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CHAPTER IV 


WHO SAY YE THAT I AM? 

Have I been so long time with you, and yet you do not 
know me 

Whose feet you washed, whose bread you broke upon the 
eager hill? 

Was I so unlike the Bridegroom who you said would come 
in glory 

That you wait, and never wonder how my hand is on you 
still? 

You bow the knee, you sip the wine, you breathe my name 
before me, 

You say I called the dead to life, but slept upon a stone— 

Have I been so long time with you, and yet you do not 
know me 

Because I laughed and loved you and bade you walk alone? 

—Willard Wattles: Lanterns in Gethsemane. 


1. The Secret of Life 

Suppose, again, that you lived in Palestine and 
knew nothing about Jesus of Nazareth save what 
you had seen Him do and heard Him say. Once 
in the crowd around the fishing boats He had laid 
his hand on you and for one thrilling moment had 
looked straight into the very depths of your life. 
You tried to shake off the impression, but could not 
forget, any more than you could smother the ques¬ 
tionings started in your mind by his story-teaching. 
A tale had been told around the bazaars, that a 


46 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

year ago down near Jerusalem a wandering prophet 
had hailed this man as the king whom the Jews were 
always talking about, but that was of no concern 
to you. Yet there was something about Him that 
would not let you go, that had to be answered be¬ 
fore you could have peace. 

It was, after all, the central quality of his per¬ 
sonality. One writes of Him, “He had found the 
secret of life: it drew thousands to Him”; another, 
“Down from the mountain-top and back to the 
common street we may go, haunted with a wistful 
sense of that Presence which will not be put by”; 
and finally, “As they heard his teaching and 
watched his ways, there grew upon them Napoleon’s 
sublime suspicion, ‘ I tell you I know men, and this 
was more than man. ’ ” It was something in Him— 
it still is—that sets the restless question going, never 
to stop until answered as Peter finally answered it, 

1 ‘ Can God be like that ? ’ ’ 

2. The Question to Peter 

Read Mark 7 : 24 to 10:16. Into this short sec¬ 
tion is crowded swift action, blow after blow at the 
slow understanding of the Twelve, and the central 
crisis in the great human relationship of Christ’s 
life, his friendship with them (8 : 27-30). A similar 
crisis had just taken place in the outside world, 
when, in the midst of adoring multitudes, Jesus 
threw away the last dramatic chance to be a “ bread- 
king” (told by John only, in 6:15). The only 


WHO SAY YE THAT I AM? 


47 


hope of real understanding of his purpose lay with 
the Twelve, so suddenly He led them far to the 
north where they could have a few days alone to¬ 
gether. Traveling through the busy coast towns, 
where they mingled with “grave Tyrian traders 
from the sea” and looked out over the Mediter¬ 
ranean with a dim realization of the world beyond 
their own little Palestine, He startled their still 
narrow minds by ministering to a woman not of 
their race (Mark 7:24-30). What did their first 
consciousness of the need of Gentiles for Christ 
finally widen into? Do you suppose they remem¬ 
bered this experience when He gave them the tre¬ 
mendous commission in Matthew 28:19? 

Troubled because even the disciples had failed 
again to see that his beautiful hospitality to the 
people was only a symbol of the way He could feed 
their hearts if they would but understand, remem¬ 
bering Peter’s loyal, “Lord, to whom (else) shall 
we go?” (John 6:68) after the feeding of the five 
thousand, He suddenly turned again to the one 
who so often was impetuous spokesman for the rest: 
‘‘Who say ye that I am?” 

On Peter’s answer hung, in a sense, the whole 
future of Christianity. Could he, representing not 
only the Twelve but all human hearts since, make 
the great leap from knowledge to faith and see in 
Jesus not only the friend of his everyday life but 
his Lord and God, other followers, forever after, 
could stake their lives on the fact of God’s actual 


48 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

presence in the world, and act accordingly. It is 
hard for us to comprehend all the meaning which, 
for any Hebrew, was packed into that simple word 
“the Christ,’’ but perhaps it was just this acknowl¬ 
edgment which made it possible for Jesus to say, 
later on, in the face of what seemed total failure, 
“I have finished my work.” 

Every deep experience of life seems to have both 
its cost and its reward; as the Twelve went farther 
and farther into this friendship, many hard things 
came to them. See how they correspond to tests 
that come to our human friendships. First they 
had to share Him with people who it was hard to 
believe had any claim on Him (Mark 7: 24-30, with 
additional light thrown on their attitude of mind 
by Matthew’s version of the story in 15:21-28). 
Immediately after Peter’s declaration they were 
told plainly that this friendship would bring 
harder things than they could imagine (Mark 8:31- 
9:1). Then they had to watch Him go through a 
great experience which they could not share, which 
in a way set Him apart from them (Mark 9:2-8), 
and close upon the exaltation of that experience 
they had to “come down to earth” both literally 
and figuratively and face a hard, unpleasant thing 
to do (Mark 9:14-29). And lastly, they still so 
failed to understand Him that they brought upon 
themselves some of the most scathing rebukes He 
had ever had to utter (Mark 9:33-10:45). 

But look below the surface, and see if in each 


WHO SAY YE THAT I AM? 


49 


instance you can find some great reward of charac¬ 
ter-building. The disciples don’t show up very 
well in this part of the story, do they, but long 
afterwards qualities appeared in them which must 
have been built into them by the hard tests of these 
very days. 

3. The Mystery of Jesus Christ 

In spite of all the tragedy that loomed up before 
Peter if he once for all threw in his lot with Jesus, 
it was in some ways easier for him to answer the 
riddle of this amazing personality than it is for 
us. He was there in the flesh, the beloved friend, 
yet by this time God-likeness brooded over Him so 
strongly that there was no longer the faintest 
doubt. “Thou art the Christ!” But we cannot 
see Him with our eyes or touch Him with our hands, 
and since that day at Caesarea Philippi hundreds 
of years have raised their hundreds of questions 
about the unseen Christ. 

“If I just try to live a Christlike life, in what I 
do and what I think, isn’t that enough ? I can say 
my prayers to God, but if I think of Christ as alive 
now I get all mixed up, and I never did understand 
the Trinity anyway. ’ ’ 

Does this sentence from a real letter by a real 
girl start any echo going in your own mind ? Here 
is part of the letter that went back to her: 

“Of course that’s the biggest thing. Living as 
Christ did is likely to keep you pretty busy for the 


50 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

rest of your life, with little time to bother about 
theology. But as surely as a car can’t go without 
electricity (except down hill!) no one can live very 
long as Christ did without some of the same kind of 
power in one. That’s what Paul meant by * Christ 
in me.’ He is the living Christ—the one way in 
which we can most easily think of God. Maybe this 
figure of speech will help you: You can live on the 
shores of a bay and come to know its tides and its 
inlets, you can chart it and sail it, and in a measure 
it is your bay. But follow it out to where the ocean 
stretches away to limitless horizons and your feel¬ 
ing of understanding, almost of possession, changes 
to one of awe and worship for something far greater 
than you can ever begin to comprehend. Yet the 
same tides rise and fall in both, the same waters. 
Jesus was as much of God as could be expressed in 
terms of human experience, and ‘he that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father, but the Father is greater 
than I.’ 

“You see, the more perfect a personality is, the 
more it can enter into other forms of life than its 
own. You can see that, for instance, in the life 
of your own mother. Then think what it could 
mean in the life of God, who is spirit. What I’m 
trying to say is, that Christ’s being on earth didn’t 
mean God wasn’t still a living presence everywhere 
throughout creation (no, I don’t mean ‘up in 
heaven’: we make such a mistake in thinking of 
Him as too far away: I mean here all around us, 


WHO SAY YE THAT I AM? 


51 


as He always is and always will be). So now, 
somehow, I think of God as that same living pres¬ 
ence (and of course that’s the Holy Spirit, that 
way of thinking about God), into whom all the 
human experiences of Christ have just flowed back 
as the tides might draw back the waters of that 
bay. So we can be the surer that He knows how 
it seems to live and love and work in a human body, 
with human limitations. Say your prayers to the 
Christlike God and don’t worry about a word which 
grew up out of church history, which Christ Him¬ 
self never used.” 

4. The Master of the House 

Once on a time a traveler found himself a guest 
in a spacious house. There were many like himself 
who had halted there for awhile, and each had 
chosen his own way to make himself at home. Some 
stayed in the turrets of the house, near the stars 
but far from other men. Some had withdrawn to 
rooms of their own. Some busied themselves near 
the foundations, and some liked best the great hall 
where people came and went. For awhile there 
was so much to see and hear that the traveler forgot 
to wonder about who the head of that house might 
be. But one day another guest, throwing a great 
log on to the fire in the central hall, said, ‘ ‘ Our host 
likes the fire kept burning, so! ” And the traveler 
suddenly realized that he had never once seen his 
host. 


52 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

Now that his curiosity was stirred he began 
watching for him, or for traces of his personality, 
everywhere, and he found them in the books, the 
pictures, the noble sight of hills and forest from 
each window, but most of all in the faces of others 
in the house. For the most part these were people 
who had to do with making the house a happy and 
comfortable place to live in. There was one espe¬ 
cially who more than all others served the guests 
from dawn till eve. When the traveler was with 
this man he was sure to find the desire to see the 
master of the house stirring in him most strongly. 
One day he asked the servant when he might be 
expected to come home. The other looked at him 
wonderfully, and said, “He is at home today.” 

For a long while the traveler did not understand. 
One day, as he still tarried, he was drawn to help 
the servant in his friendly work about the house. 
As he worked he came to a task too big for one 
man’s strength, and called to the servant for a help¬ 
ing hand. He came swiftly, with a look in his face 
that the traveler had been too blind to see before. 
Dazed with the revelation of his host, the guest of 
that house put his hands before his eyes, crying, 
“You! It was you, then, all the while!” 

But the other only went about the business of 
helping him with his task. 


CHAPTER V 
I SEND YOU FORTH 
Mark 6 : 7-13; Luke 10:1-16 

1. Noblesse Oblige 

2. The Great Commission 

3. A Religion that Is True to Life 

4. ‘ ‘ Dividing Up ’ ’ 

































































































































































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CHAPTER V 
I SEND YOU FORTH 


Now God be thanked who has matched us with his hour, 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping! 

—Rupert Brooke. 


1. Noblesse Oblige 

In the first days of the war, across the billboards 
of England was scrawled by hand, for very lack 
of time for printing, “Kitchener wants 100,000 
men. ’ * 

Only a few days later, England was in splendid 
mourning for the very aristocracy—in its spiritual 
sense—of her manhood, for the first to spring to 
her need and to certain death, were those whose 
innate valor and disciplined wills made them the 
4 ‘ first to fight. ’ ’ And as long as the memory of the 
war shall last, men and women and children will 
thrill to the story of the First Hundred Thousand, 
those who instinctively obeyed that old law of life, 

‘ ‘ To whomsoever much is given, of him much shall 
be required.” 

You see, if you have been an aristocrat of the 
spirit, that is, if you have chosen to follow the best 
you know, then you have begun to come into pos¬ 
session of the greatest gift that could come to you 


56 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

in all your life, knowing Jesus Christ. But with it, 
as with all gifts that are worth anything, comes a 
condition: the only way you can be sure of keeping 
it is by sharing it. You have to give, give, give, to 
the uttermost. That is what Jesus Himself did; 
that is what knowing Him is bound to mean to you. 
Do you sometimes feel like turning back? No one 
is going to make you go on, but remember, if you 
don’t, you forfeit good company. 

2. The Great Commission 

The phrase, the Great Commission, usually refers 
to the words in Matthew 28:19, 20, but the send¬ 
ing” idea is so strong in the passages we are study¬ 
ing today that nothing less than those words will 
express it. Jesus must have cared tremendously 
about making this understood, for see how definite 
He was in telling the disciples how to go about it. 

Not only had He tried over and over again, in 
stories and teaching, to make it clear that God 
wants the comradeship of us all, not only was He 
about to give his own life to prove it, but twice in 
this last month He deliberately. sent people out to 
seek other people. He seemed to feel that if He 
could get them to try out their own seeking power 
then, while He was still with them, He could be 
surer that they would go ahead after He had had 
to leave them to their own resources. First, you 
remember, He tried it with just the Twelve (Mark 
6:7-13), then with a larger number (Luke 10:1- 


I SEND YOU FORTH 


57 


16), sending out seventy givers-of-life, perhaps with 
a half sad, half ironic remembrance that even then 
seventy destroyers-of-life* were plotting against 
Him in Jerusalem. 

Can you think of any other times when He made 
any organized effort for the carrying out of his 
plans, or do these two incidents stand alone? Do 
you suppose it was hard for the disciples to believe 
that God wants all people ? 

Meanwhile, before and after these two actual 

sendings, ’ ’ indeed all through this last year, were 
scattered stories which in many ways illustrated 
this one great fact Jesus seemed bent on showing— 
the seeking love of God, which is ready to spend 
itself utterly if in so doing He may reach the hearts 
of his children. The greatest of these stories is that 
of the Prodigal Son. Sometimes I think, however, 
that for many of us who have not as yet lived very 
long, or very far below the surface, the story of the 
lost coin has more meaning. (Both of these are 
found in Luke 15, in the midst of that group of 
stories told by Luke alone.) The coin had not done 
anything desperately wicked, like the Prodigal Son; 
it had simply rolled off in a corner and settled down 
out of reach. If you translated “Saviour” into 
4 ‘ God seeking me, ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ lost ’ ’ into ‘ ‘ out of reach, ’ ’ 
would it be easier to see how some of those old 
phrases apply, after all, to most of us ? 

*The Sanhedrin, which was even then plotting Jesus’ 
death, was made up of seventy priests. 


58 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

In all the records covering this section of Jesus’ 
life, watch for three things: how He is not only 
teaching the idea of a seeking God but at the same 
time living it out; how in this and other ways He 
is now making it plainer and plainer that He and 
God are one, and how all of this is leading up to the 
greatest proof of the seeking love of God, which was 
so soon to take place on the Cross. 

3. A Religion that Is True to Lif e 

Jesus Christ was the greatest psychologist who 
ever lived. That is, He understood the laws of life. 
He understood them so well, and related Christian¬ 
ity so wisely to them, that it is bound to last forever. 
In other words, it is “ true to life . 9 ’ 

A fundamental law on which Christianity is 
based is this: that life must be given to make new 
life. Of course this is another way of talking about 
the law of creation. It might sound like a very 
hard law were it not for the other half of it, that 
in the giving up of some part of your own life, 
to bring new life to someone else, you somehow 
come out the gainer! I doubt if we can ever under¬ 
stand this completely until we get farther along 
into eternity, where a lot of things will be better 
explained; but we see great hints and even promises 
of it every single day in the kind of happiness peo¬ 
ple have who have given up something for some¬ 
body else. For that matter, we’ve all felt it in our¬ 
selves. We don’t know exactly why, but it is 


I SEND YOU FORTH 


59 


perfectly certain that we feel better when we have 
acted in accordance with this law than when we’ve 
“saved” our own lives. But the sooner we under¬ 
stand it as a great central fact of the world and 
of our religion, the more trouble we will save our¬ 
selves and other people, and the happier we shall 
be! 

Jesus came that all God’s children “might have 
life.” Knowing Him is bound to make us radiant, 
overflowing with life and the joy of it. That is his 
gift to us. And we know now that we can’t keep it 
without sharing it, that we must 4 4 go out and divide 
up, ” as a girl once said after a summer conference. 
It’s a big task to divide up with 4 4 all nations. ’ ’ If 
those first friends of Jesus had half realized just 
how big a task it was, I suppose they would hardly 
have had the courage even to begin. They might 
so easily have reasoned this way, “We’re not gen¬ 
iuses, and most of us are still young, and our own 
home towns are the hardest places to begin in—let’s 
wait.” But did they? No, they began where they 
were, with what little ability they had, interpreting 
Jesus to whomsoever they met, whatever it cost 
them in misunderstanding or very real hardship, 
and I think about the biggest thing that has ever 
been said of them was this, 44 A handful of plain, 
ordinary men turned the world upside down for no 
reason than that they were disciples indeed.” 

I used to think being a disciple meant being 
something like a monk! It was a long time before 


60 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

it dawned on me that a twentieth-century girl could 
be a disciple too. 

4. “Dividing TJp” 

If beginning today, right where we are and with 
what we have, you and I were “disciples indeed/’ 
what would it involve ? 

11 Right where we are ’’ is a pretty big place! For 
two reasons, we probably have a bigger chance 
than girls or women have ever had before. First, 
it happens anyway, as a result of that new under¬ 
standing about Jesus’ social teachings that we 
talked about in Chapter III, to be the fashion in 
this generation of ours to care tremendously about 
just this matter of “dividing up.” All the talk 
about “the social gospel,” “the brotherhood of 
man,” “the new democracy,” etc., means just that. 
Secondly, the war suddenly intensified all these 
questions, and made them the most important mat¬ 
ter the world is to decide in our lifetime. 

“Can we rebuild the world on Jesus’ plan?” has 
been a question much asked since the war. 

For most of us that is too big to take in all at 
once; it makes our brains feel “all stretched in¬ 
side.” But if this struggling, imperfect world is 
to be built into something nearer to the kingdom 
of God, I verily believe there is nothing greater to 
be done than for just every-day folks, like you and 
me, to begin right where they are, and, as someone 
has put it, to “fix their attitudes of mind.” Your 


I SEND YOU FORTH 


61 


mental attitudes are being made, willy-nilly, right 
now. Are they being made right? Try them out, 
against some such questions as these: 

Do you feel that you understand something of 
the relation between ourselves and God our Father 
—something of his love and plans for all of us? 
Are you glad you do? Do you want to keep this 
knowledge to yourself? Whom do you want to 
have know about it? Do you honestly believe it’s 
for everybody? Do you act as if you did? 

How would you talk and feel, supposing you are 
a white person, if a negro family moved into the 
house next door to you? How do you feel, if you 
are fairly well educated, about a girl who says, ‘ ‘ If 
I’d went,” or who uses her knife and fork awk¬ 
wardly ? How do you feel, if you can support your¬ 
self, about the girl who does nothing for a living, 
or vice versa? How do you feel about the use of 
such words as “coon,” “sheeny,” or “Jap”? 
What does patriotism mean to you ? Have you ever 
thought what it would mean to be a good citizen 
of the world as well as of your town or country? 
Do you think it counts more to go as a missionary 
to some foreign land than to do your ‘ ‘ dividing up ’ ’ 
in your home town? Do you think being really 
Christian means thinking of missionary work 
abroad as naturally and inevitably as doing it right 
where you are? 

“Jesus’ plan” was to think of the world as one 
family. When two members of a family live side 


62 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

by side they don’t have a fence between the two 
houses. Robert Frost says in his poem on “Mend¬ 
ing Wall,” “Something there is (in nature) that 
doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” Think 
very hard for a few minutes about what walls there 
are between you and “other kinds” of people. 
What can you do to tear them down? 

A girl once said she thought “service just meant 
giving your neighbor a few kind words and an 
orange ! ’ ’ But you have to be pretty sure that your 
heart and your mind are right before you under¬ 
take even that. 

If you don’t believe that all you can do counts, 
think back to those people who first knew Jesus, 
and think what would have happened if they had 
felt that way too. 

There is an old legend about the Angel Gabriel 
asking Jesus, when He returned to heaven, what 
He had done about his great enterprise of establish¬ 
ing God’s kingdom on earth. 

“I left it with my friends,” Jesus answered. 

“But suppose they should fail, what other plan 
have you?” 

“I have no other plan,” was the reply. 


CHAPTER VI 

WOULD YE ALSO GO AWAY? 

John 6: 66-69 

1. Comrades for a Cause 

2. “All that He Hath He well Give 

Away” 

3. The Cross in the World Today 

4. Love, or Peace of Mind? 



















































CHAPTER VI 


WOULD YE ALSO GO AWAY? 

Men of the East may watch the stars 
And times and seasons mark, 

But those who are marked with the sign of the Cross 
Go gaily in the dark! 

1. Comrades for a Cause 

Once there was a girl who gloried in being per¬ 
fectly carefree and happy and kept refusing to 
admit that there was anything wrong in the world. 
One day she stood on the edge of the sidewalk and 
watched a brave little parade of garment-makers 
on strike go straggling down the street. Something 
in their set young faces made her uncomfortable. 
Suddenly she saw herself standing on the curb of 
life instead of down in the thick of it. 

‘ ‘ I suppose I ’ll never feel young again,” she 
argued to herself with a funny little feeling of self- 
pity. “It takes it out of you so, to know about hard 
things.” But like the Boy Who Wanted to Shiver 
she felt the reality of life tugging at her, and sud¬ 
denly with a tragic little feeling of leaving her 
youth forever behind her, she found herself down 
in the street, helping a girl to hold a banner which 
read, “We only ask to be allowed to live.” 

She swung into step with the marching girls. 
She felt the solemn thrill of the Cause which moved 


66 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

their tired feet. She glanced at the girl marching 
next to her and saw her as a girl she might know, 
instead of just a garment-maker. She looked up at 
the blue banner and wondered what it would be like 
to have to ask * ‘to be allowed to live,” and it hurt 
her throat. This, then, was life with pain in it! 
This was learning to suffer! 

A few blocks down the street we saw her, still 
marching. Did she look as if it was “taking it out 
of her”? No 1 —unless it was some of the sin of self 
that was being taken away. Rather, she was more 
radiantly, intensely alive than ever we had seen her, 
head up, eyes shining, and a beginning of that look 
that comes to the face of one who ‘ ‘ goes gaily in the 
dark. ’ ’ 

Some of us will begin to understand the Cross 
first by facing the wrong things in our own lives. 
Some of us, like this girl, will see it first in wrong 
things or hurt places in other folks’ lives, that we 
can help by caring about them, and quickly enough 
that will make us face our own faulty lives too. 
Whichever way it comes to us, it is a matter of joint 
concern to Christ and ourselves. Every day of the 
world He needs us, very really, to help Him make 
wrong things right, whether in ourselves or some¬ 
where else. But this is where we fail Him most. 
Once when the Twelve were first beginning to 
realize what friendship with Him was going to 
involve (John 6:66, 67), He asked them one of the 
most wistful questions ever uttered; and when you 


WOULD YE ALSO GO AWAY? 


67 


and I have followed Him to the first crossroads, the 
same question comes down the years straight to our 
hearts, ‘‘Would ye also go away ?’’ 

2. “All that He Hath He will Give Away” 

Read again Mark 11:1 to 15: 47. We can under¬ 
stand the meaning of this last week so much better 
than could the bewildered disciples, for we look at 
it in the light of Jesus’ resurrection, of which they 
were as yet ignorant, and also in its great historical 
setting. Yet even they must have felt some dim 
sense of the dramatic purpose back of it all, of the 
fearless planning of Jesus to let his death come at 
the same time as the national feast of sacrifice, and 
his deliberate marching into the steel trap set for 
Him at the nation’s capital. Why do you think it 
was done in this way? 

His teachings now were of two kinds. Publicly, 
they were chiefly in the nature of a brilliant fencing 
with the trained men of argument sent by the 
Pharisees to trip Him up. Then there are the 
strange long passages (see Mark 13) which seem 
to have to do with the ending of the world, which 
are so unlike Jesus’ customary way of talking that 
it is well for us to understand that they were 
worded according to a certain mystical form of 
expression then popular among the Hebrews, called 
“apocalyptic” writing. Jesus may actually have 
used this form of speech, which his hearers would 
understand perfectly well as a current form of 


68 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

figurative language, or some of his sayings may 
have been clothed in this form by Mark, just as any 
writer is tempted to use the language of the day. 

But for the most part, when with the smaller 
group of his friends, that ‘ ‘ good ground ’ ’ on which 
his words might fall and take root, He now poured 
out his love to the uttermost, talking to them as 
never before, bent on binding them to Him forever. 
If we had no record of his life but that of the last 
supper He and the Twelve had together, we should 
still have enough to live by, for the whole meaning 
of his life and death and life again, is summed up in 
that wonderful talk and prayer. Read the four¬ 
teenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of John 
straight through as if you had never heard them 
before. Never mind if you do not understand them 
very well; they are written by one who was far 
more mystical than most of us can well comprehend. 
But in spite of this, they have probably meant more 
to people than any other part of the Bible, for most 
of us know something about love, and the more we 
know of it, the more we come to understand how 
it always means giving life. 

Here was the very love of God embodied in a 
human life, and the decision to kill this man, on 
the part of those who hated the loveliness of his 
life, seems to stand for the way God is forever hurt 
by the wrong choices of his children. The one thing 
Jesus seemed most eager for the eleven to under¬ 
stand was their oneness with Him and therefore 


WOULD YE ALSO GO AWAY? 


69 


with God; so that they and generations of his fol¬ 
lowers after them, would carry on his work of in¬ 
terpreting God and bringing people into comrade¬ 
ship with Him. He alone knew how hard this 
would often prove to be, but how well He knew, too, 
that this work done for love’s sake would bring 
them deepest joy, a “joy that no man taketh from 
you”! 

3. The Cross in the World Today 

Then did God suffer once for all, on Calvary, for 
all the wrong of the world, or is it after all true 
that his suffering is going on today, and that we 
are perhaps adding to it? Does “sin” seem to you 
something black and remote that you don’t know 
anything about yet, or do you think it might be 
about as wrong for you, who know better, to be lazy 
about living up to your understanding of Chris¬ 
tianity, for instance, as for an untrained, unad¬ 
vantaged person to commit acknowledged crime? 
Apply to your own life the definition of sin, that 
* ‘ having seen and known the better, you have 
chosen and done the worse, ’ ’ and see if there is any 
of it in your own life. What difference would that 
make in your judgment of people who do wrong? 

If you could see your part of the world as God 
sees it, what would you see in it that is separating 
it from Him ? Think of your own life, of your own 
family, of the way people you know think and act 
about their good times, about their jobs, about Sun- 


70 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

day, about their neighbors, about God. Imagine 
God brooding over this neighborhood of yours, 
trying to love it into being at one with Him in all 
these things. Imagine Him counting on you to 
help Him in this, wanting to take you into partner¬ 
ship. Would ye also go away ? 

4. Love, or Peace of Mind? 

Perhaps we shall never fully understand this 
question of suffering, giving love till we have in 
some way created life. It isn’t only mothers who 
create life, either: there are plenty of seemingly 
alive people who need to be loved into more life, 
and this, it seems to me, is the special job of all 
womenfolk. And as soon as you take some respon¬ 
sibility for another life you get both joy and pain, 
and there’s no way out of it. You remember how 
Judy wrote to her man, in “Daddy Longlegs,” 
after they had become engaged, “Now I shall have 
a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life, whenever 
you are away from me. My peace of mind is gone 
forever, but I never did care much for just plain 
peace.” 

If we try to love people as Christ loved them, 
we’ll come a little nearer to an understanding of 
the Cross. Life may not be quite as comfortable or 
even as superficially happy as before, but joy is 
greater than happiness, and we will have tasted 
life to the full, and who would not rather live that 
way than be half alive! 


CHAPTER VII 

I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS 

Matthew 28:16-20 

1. Partnership 

2. The Great Surprise 

3. “Surely He Cometh” 

4. The Divine Adventure 







■ ' • 






CHAPTER VII 


“I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS” 

The angels keep their ancient places— 

Turn but a stone, and start a wing: 

'Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces 
That miss the many-splendored thing. 

Frances Thompson: In No Strange Land. 

But so long as they lived who had seen Him, they looked 

out for Him every day .... any knock at the door. 

any solitary figure on the hill paths about Bethany. 

For they had laid Him in the tomb, and He had come to 
them in the very flesh. 

—Mary Austin: The Green Bough. 

1. Partnership 

Robin’s mother told me this story about Robin 
when he was four. Tired of playing with his own 
things, he begged her for something to do, and she 
gave him his big brother’s stilts to learn to walk 
on. At first she held them for him as he climbed 
up, and gave him a head start. Then she went on 
into the house about her own work, calling back to 
him, “You’re big enough to learn to walk on them 
now, son, try it all by yourself. ’ ’ 

Presently she came back and stood on the path 
above him. Robin’s hands could hardly hold the 
rough stilts, and his stubby little feet kept slipping 
and down he would come. Each time he tried and 
slipped, his face got a little redder, his breath came 




74 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

short, and his mouth came more dangerously near 
that piteous quiver that foretells a sob. As she 
was silently standing there, suddenly he looked up, 
and the light flashed back into the baby face. ‘ ‘ Oh, 
mother, if I’d a-known you was there I could a-done 
it right off!” he crowed, and with his eyes turned 
to her he got his feet firmly under the straps and 
walked six whole steps along the garden path! 

When you turn to the last of Matthew and read, 
“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of 
the world, ’ ’ what do you see—the Jesus of history, 
back among his disciples after they had forever 
given Him up, or a Jesus whom sometime, away off 
in the future ‘ ‘ end of the world,’ ’ you yourself will 
see as they saw Him? Or rather do you think of 
Him as the comrade who has placed Himself beside 
your life and is now, this day, and this minute, a 
quiet partner in all the worth-while things that you 
think and say and do ? 

2. The Great Surprise 

“Thus Jesus died: young, beloved, adored, yet 
rejected by all but a few of his own countrymen. 
The most they could hope was that his memory 
would haunt them like a sacred dream. Then it 
would die slowly away. None were left capable of 
leadership. Long years would pass before another 
attempt like his. The light had closed upon the 
world indeed.” 

— W. J. Dawson: The Life of Christ. 


I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS 


75 


Read John 20:1 to 21:17. If only we were not 
so used to the story, we could realize more vividly 
the experience of that first handful to whom came 
what someone has called “the great surprise.” 
We are so accustomed to reading into it all the con¬ 
ventional meanings that we almost lose sight of 
what it meant to those who saw it happen before 
their own eyes. What do you think concerned them 
more, this proof of personal immortality that they 
could now count upon, or the fact that they could 
go on with Christ’s work, even more sure of his 
presence than when He was bodily with them? 

What difference did the experience make in their 
fellowship together, in their actions, in their cour¬ 
age and confidence ? Dr. Glover says that after all, 
the biggest proof of the fact of the resurrection is 
that this group of men—up to this time, ordinary, 
hesitant, almost weak—now came out into public 
life with an utterly new assurance. The making 
over of impetuous Peter, in whom the change shows 
more clearly than in the rest (see the first few 
chapters of Acts, especially 4:13), is just an in¬ 
stance of the tremendous change which must have 
come to all of them, else how could we trace the 
whole strength of Christianity today back to that 
handful of quite commonplace men! 

They could not have realized how much their 
simple “carrying on” was to mean to generations 
to come; doubtless they had too much to do to think 
much in terms of the future. His work was to be 


76 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 


kept going, his sheep were to be fed (John 21:15- 
17). Although they had seen Him killed with their 
own eyes, for a time He was back among them, 
their comrade as of old. After awhile they no 
longer saw Him, but the veil between two worlds 
had been torn apart, He was there where their 
spirits could find Him every day, and gradually 
what we call prayer, and what they must have 
thought of as just “speaking with him in the way” 
(Luke 24:32), grew up between the disciples and 
the living Christ. 

3. “Surely He Cometh” 

Why, after all, need there be such a difference 
between their feeling and ours? We wistfully long 
for that intimate experience of Him which came to 
the fishermen of long ago, but even as He bound 
them to Him, in that last prayer (John 17), He was 
thinking in a far wider range: “Neither for them 
only do I pray, but for them also that believe. ’ ’ 
When you say in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe 
.... He cometh again,” what do you mean, an 
actual return some time far ahead, or do you just 
say it without really knowing what it does mean ? 
This is a place to remember that test of all his 
words, “they are spirit.” Then does it not mean 
just what we have seen happen, that slowly and 
surely his spirit will penetrate the life of the world ? 
We may call it, in the beautiful old phrase of the 
church, the Holy Spirit, but again, that is just 


I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS 


77 


another way of saying, the living God, in his 
world. And in your own individual life what could 
that mean, ‘ ‘ He cometh again ’ ’ ? If I tried to pray 
this morning, and couldn’t seem to find God, “He 
cometh again.” Then if I just keep at it, if I 
“hold the door open,” He will come into my life 
in the way He seems to have come to so many people 
I want to be like. If I seem to have gone so little 
a way into the possibilities of that friendship, if 
already I’ve wasted so much time,—He cometh 
again, and again and again, for He is “with me 
always. ’ ’ And this is not only for the years I can 
foresee, but there is all the great adventure of 
another world just ahead in which it will be easier 
to know Him, for did He not say, “day by day 
until the close of the age ’ ’ ? 

4. The Divine Adventure 

And so we come to “the Way,” in our search for 
the perfect friend. One of the biggest things 
ever said about making friends was that we must 
never begin a friendship that can have an end, for 
all friendships must draw us to God, and God has 
no end. If this is true of our friends, is it not the 
very essence of our relationship to Jesus Christ! 

Together we have faced his appeal to our wills, 
our hearts and our minds; we have seen that friend¬ 
ship with Him means nothing less than the taking 
of his heart’s desire, the building of the kingdom 
of God, for our heart’s desire; we have thought 


78 


STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 


about what it will cost us to know Him so well, but 
we have seen, too, the greater gain. 

If it seems too difficult, if you want to stay com¬ 
fortable and undisturbed, if you don’t want to 
exert yourself to think hard, or to feel deeply, or 
to “divide up” whatever good gifts there are in 
your life, in short, if you don’t want the responsi¬ 
bility of the greatest friendship of all, then you 
still can say, “I know not this man” (Matthew 
26:74). 

But if you are ready in heart and spirit for the 
Divine Adventure, knowing Jesus Christ, then 

Speak to Him, thou, for He heareth, 

Spirit with spirit can meet; 

Closer is He than breathing, 

Nearer than hands and feet. 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 





























♦ 

















































































































. 


























































































































































I 















































































A TEACHING OUTLINE 


FOR 

“STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST” 
Introductory Lesson 

In so far as possible the Bible references are in 
Mark, supplemented where necessary with addi¬ 
tional material such as Matthew’s record of the 
Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s parables on the 
seeking love of God, and John’s fuller account of 
the closing days of the life of Jesus. 

A possible use of the Weymouth or Moffatt trans¬ 
lation of the New Testament into modern speech 
will lend a fresh impression to the familiar material 
of the Gospels. 

It may be desirable to have the class assemble in 
consecutive order, by clipping and pasting, all the 
Bible passages referred to; or an introduction to 
one of the parallel arrangements of the Gospels 
will lessen the confusion made by the duplications 
in the four records. Hucks’ “Synopsis of the 
First Three Gospels” ($1.00), or Stevens and 
Burton’s “Harmony of the Gospels” ($1.00) is 
suggested. “The Shorter Bible,” Charles Foster 
Kent ($1.00), gives a single record of the material 
in the Gospels, in a modern translation. 


82 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

Reference Material for Introductory Lesson 

“A Short Introduction to the Gospels,” Burton. 
A handbook of the origin and composition of the 
four Gospels. $1.00. 

“Modern Discipleship,” Woods. Pages 140 and 
141 on the contribution of the nations to Chris¬ 
tianity. 75 cents. 

“The Syrian Christ,” Ribhany. What an 
oriental mind reads into the New Testament, by a 
Syrian who is now an American Christian. $1.50. 

For Class Discussion 

a. What sort of an impression of the life of 
Jesus have most of the class to start out with? Is 
it hazy or clear-cut, disorganized or consecutive, 
mechanical or vivid and alive? 

b. Discuss the value of having four records of 
practically the same events. If there is time, read 
aloud passages which contain distinguishing fea¬ 
tures, such as Mark 1: 29-39; Matthew 4:12-16; 
Luke 15:1-7; or John 3:1-21, and let the class 
guess who wrote them. Think of four modern types 
of people as different as the four recorders of Jesus’ 
life, and discuss what sort of an impression He 
would make on their lives now. 

c. Granted that “the gospel according to you” 
is still being written, discuss what special contribu¬ 
tions the class group, the community, and even our 
country may be adding to it today. 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 


83 


Assignment for Next Lesson 

Read as a prologue to the life of Jesus Christ, 
John 1:1-18. 

Read the Gospel of Mark straight through. 

In the first chapter especially you will find many 
phrases showing how Jesus irresistibly drew people 
to Him. Mark these and all similar phrases in the 
other chapters. 


Chapter 1 
What Seek Ye t 
Reference Material 

“The Mind of the Messiah,” Adams. See fore¬ 
word for a study of the Messianic hope. 40 cents. 

“The Jesus of History,” Glover. On “rethink¬ 
ing God,” through the medium of Jesus Christ. 
$ 1 . 00 . 

“The Laws of Friendship, Human and Divine,” 
King. For comparison of human friendship and 
our friendship with God. $1.25. 

For possible reading aloud: 

“The Way,” in the Inch Library. On the 
‘ ‘ average girl’s state of mind about Jesus Christ. ’ 7 
7 cents. 

For Class Discussion 

a. Discuss what it was in Jesus that drew so 
many kinds of people to Him. Was it their politi¬ 
cal hope, or their personal need ? 


84 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

b. Turn some of the personal questions in para¬ 
graph 3 into questions for class discussion and in 
addition consider the following: What are the 
strongest arguments you can give for the necessity 
of knowing about Jesus Christ? Of knowing Him? 
Has anyone a right to refuse to believe in Jesus 
Christ who has not been willing to ‘ ‘ come and see ’ ’ ? 

c. The chapter headings of this course suggest 
the growing relationship between Jesus and his 
disciples. How do you think this compares with 
the natural development of any friendship, and 
with our experience of “knowing Jesus Christ”? 

Assignment for Next Lesson 

Read over again Mark 1:16 to 7. 

List the deeds recorded in this section, noting 
especially those which had to do with individuals. 

Study Jesus’ use of time. Write from this record 
and your imagination a description of how you 
think He might have spent a day. 

Chapter II 

The Things Ye Have Seen 
Reference Material 

“The Life of Christ,” Dawson. Chapter VI is 
on the personal charm of Jesus, and chapter XI 
sketches the deeds which filled a typical day in 
Jesus’ life. $1.50. 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 


85 


‘ ‘ Studies in the Life of Christ,’ ’ Bosworth. For 
comment on specific deeds. 60 cents. 

“The Social Principles of Jesus,” Rauschen- 
busch. For the Christian attitude towards indi¬ 
viduals. 75 cents. 

“Grace H. Dodge, a Woman of Creative Faith.” 
One who worked through modern organizations but 
kept her contact with individuals. 25 cents. 

Such accounts of the transforming power of 
Christianity as are found in “Twice-Born Men,” 
Begbie ($1.25), “Dr. Luke of Labrador,” Duncan 
(75 cents), or, to come nearer to a girl’s experience, 
“One Girl’s Influence,” Dr. Speer’s sketch of the 
life of Louise Andrews. 60 cents. 

For Class Discussion 

a. Discuss our use of time as compared with 
that of Jesus. How much do the conditions of 
modern life justify the great difference? 

b. Compare Jesus’ attitude toward individuals 
with modern impersonal ways of helping people. 
Think of some of the actual people who went to 
Him for help and decide to what organizations or 
agencies we would be likely, were we to meet such 
people today, to turn them over. How much of 
this is necessary and right ? What do we lose by it ? 

c. Can you think of instances of modern 
miracles wrought by Christianity? These may be 
of a physical nature, such as the work of the Red 
Cross, or of a spiritual nature, as a change of char- 


86 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

acter because someone believed in someone else who 
needed it. 

Assignment for Next Lesson 

Re-read the material assigned for the last lesson, 
but this time more as a study of the teachings of 
Jesus than of his deeds. Try as hard as you can 
to approach it as if you had never heard this sort of 
teaching before. Read also Jesus’ 44 inaugural 
address,” the Sermon on the Mount (found only 
in Matthew 5-8), which gives in condensed form 
more of his teaching than any other section. 


Chapter III 

The Things Ye Have Heard 
Reference Material 

44 The Life of Christ, ’ ’ Dawson. Chapter XX, on 
the teachings of Jesus as they struck the people of 
his time. 

4 4 Modern Discipleship, ’ ’ Woods. Chapter IX, on 
approach to Bible study and Christian truth. 

44 In the Days of His Flesh,” Smith ($2.50) ; 
44 The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,” Eder- 
sheim ($1.00) ; the New Century Bible commen¬ 
taries; or in more popular form, “Studies in the 
Life of Christ,” Bosworth. For interpretation of 
given passages in the Gospels. 

“The Social Principles of Jesus,” Rauschen- 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 


87 


buseh. For the application of the teachings of 
Jesus to the life of today. 

For Class Discussion 

a. What can you think of in the every-day life 
we see around us to correspond to the wrongs Jesus 
attacked in his teachings? Then is it as fresh and 
true-to-life today as it was at that time? Do you 
think his teachings will ever be out of date ? 

b. Bring in for discussion some of the specific 
problems which have troubled you in your Bible 
reading, and see if you can get an answer, or a clue 
to an answer, by means of the “formula” suggested 
on p. 7. 

c. Where and how can you see “the mind of 
Christ” influencing the life around you today? 
(Look for this in your home, your school or place 
of work, your town or city politics, and the daily 
newspaper.) 

Assignment for Next Lesson 

Read Mark 7 : 24 to 10 : 52. 

Search through all the material we have studied 
so far for everything Jesus has said of Himself or 
others have said of Him which has any bearing on 
the mystery of his own personality. What word 
does Peter use in the conversation reported in 
8: 27-30 which has not been used before, and what 
was its meaning ? 

Write your own answer to Jesus’ question, 


88 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

“Who say ye that I am?” Be sure to use only 
your own thinking and your own words for this, 
no matter how inadequate they may seem. 

Chapter IV 

Who Say Ye that I Am? 

Reference Material 

“The Person of Jesus Christ,” Mackintosh. On 
the nature of Christ’s personality, and our personal 
relation to Him. 35 cents. 

“The God We Trust,” Ross. See Introduction 
for the reason for a creed. $1.25. 

“Some Christian Convictions,” Coffin. $1.25. 

For Class Discussion 

a. Do you think it is necessary for each of us to 
answer the question Christ put to Peter? Why? 
What do we have to guard against in trying to 
define Jesus Christ? What is the value of a creed? 
What are its dangers ? 

b. What do you think should be your attitude 
of mind about all these questions? Discuss the 
comparative importance of trying to understand 
them and of simply living in Christ’s spirit. Does 
being a Christian involve something of both? 

c. Is there anything in your thought of Jesus 
which conflicts with your idea of God ? What dif¬ 
ference does it make in some of your ideas if you 
think of Him as a Christlike God ? What did Jesus 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 


89 


mean when He said, “The Father is greater than 
I” (John 14: 28) ? What forms of self-expression 
on the part of God might He have had in mind ? 

Assignment for Next Lesson 

Read Luke 10:1-24, and the whole of Chapters 
14 and 15. Turn back to our Introduction to find 
out why Luke would put in these stories for which 
the terse Mark made no place. What great quality 
of God do you think they all serve to illustrate ? 

Write out what you think a girl of your age and 
in your particular circumstances could do to make 
God known to other people. 

Chapter V 
1 Send You Forth 
Reference Material 

“God’s in His Heaven,” Raine. In the Second 
Inch of the Inch Library. On our partnership with 
God in making the world right. 10 cents. 

“Peter of the World,” Sims. In the First Inch 
of the Inch Library. 7 cents. On beginning to 
“divide up” right where we are. 

The concluding paragraph on p. 196 of “The 
Social Principles of Jesus,” Rauschenbusch. 

For Class Discussion 

a. Do you think it is actually true that much 
shall be required of him to whom much has been 


90 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

given, and that he that loseth his life shall save it ? 
How do you see these laws work out in the lives of 
people around you ? Are you willing to take them 
into account in planning your own life ? 

b. What are the particular “walls” in the 
thinking of the people of your own family, neigh¬ 
borhood or community? What could you do this 
week to help tear them down ? 

c. Compare the way Jesus counted on his fol¬ 
lowers to interpret the “seeking God” and the way 
we act as if it would “get done somehow,” by the 
church, we suppose. In this sense what is the 
church: ‘ 1 they, ’ ’ or you and I, working, of course, 
with God ? How much could this class group 
actually do in a given length of time, say a year, 
to “divide up” what we know about God? Shall 
we try ? 

Assignment for Next Lesson 

Read Mark 11:1 to 15: 47. Try to live your way 
into this account of Jesus' last week, entering as 
much as you can into the thoughts of the friends 
who were closest to Him through these days. Sup¬ 
plement Mark’s record with the fuller account of 
the last hours Jesus had with his disciples in John 
13-17. When you come to Mark 15:47 try 
especially to imagine their feeling that it was all 
over, and think your way into what the world 
would be like now if the record had stopped there. 

Write out, as if to someone to whom it was all 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 


91 


new, why it seems to you Jesus had to die. Don’t 
use any second-hand words or thoughts about this 
if you can help it: get at it as much as you can by 
your own reasoning. 

Chapter VI 

Would Ye Also Go Away ? 

Reference Material 

“The Person of Jesus Christ,” Mackintosh. 
“God’s in His Heaven,” Raine. In the Second 
Inch of the Inch Library. 

“Some Christian Convictions,” Coffin. Chapter 
V on the Cross. 

For Class Discussion 

a. How did the experiences of the war help us 
all better to understand the meaning of the Cross ? 

b. What do you see in the life all around you 
that you think God must be suffering for today? 
What good would it do for you to feel responsible 
for these things? What would you lose by it? 
What would you gain ? Do you think having once 
been drawn to follow Jesus Christ you can ever 
“go away”? Then are you ready to share with 
Him this responsibility for things that are wrong? 

Assignment for Next Lesson 

The original Mark manuscript was broken off at 
16:8, so for a full account of Christ’s return read 


92 STUDIES IN KNOWING JESUS CHRIST 

John 20:1 to 21: 25. Matthew remembered to add 
the Great Commission, closing with the sentence 
which has meant as much to us as anything in the 
Bible. Read Matthew 28:16-20. Read also the 
first four chapters of Acts. 

Try by a supreme effort of your imagination to 
think yourself into the feeling of the disciples 
before the resurrection, find out what you can about 
what their idea of death would be, then read this 
last story straight through as if you had never 
heard of it before. 

Through this section and the first part of Acts 
study the difference you think the resurrection 
made in the whole bearing of the disciples. Because 
of this experience what do you think prayer must 
have come to mean to them ? Study especially John 
21:15-17 and see how it sums up our whole course. 


Chapter VII 
I Am with You Always 

Reference Material 

“The God We Trust,” Ross. Chapter IV for the 
question, “What has become of Jesus?” 

“Modern Discipleship,’’ Woods. Chapter II on 
companionship with God. 

For possible reading aloud: 

“The Second Crucifixion,” Le Gallienne. On 


A TEACHING OUTLINE 


93 


p. 211 of “Jesus the Man of Galilee/’ Slack. 35 
cents. 

For Class Discussion 

a. If our sense of companionship with Christ 
were strong enough what would happen to some of 
the questions about this relationship which we now 
may sometimes think of as “problems,” such as 
prayer, the communion service, and our relation to 
the church? 

b. What have you got from this course to give 
you a better understanding of friendship with 
Jesus Christ? With what kind of study would you 
like to follow it up ? 

c. Repeat together, to close, Ephesians 3 :14-21, 
substituting “we” and “us” for “I” and “you” 
so it will be a group prayer. 










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